


Stood Up for Evil

by JadeFlicker



Category: Overlord - Maruyama Kugane & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Corpse Desecration, Corpses, Descent into Madness, Does it count as cannibalism if you're not human anymore?, Dungeons & Dragons References, Evil, F/M, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Genderfluid, Genderswap, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insanity, M/M, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Other, People Eating, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Reluctant Sadist, Sadism, Siblings, Snakes, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 02:55:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19033324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeFlicker/pseuds/JadeFlicker
Summary: When you feel like a monster.And you look like a monster.It's very easy to start thinking like a monster.It's very easy to start acting like one, too.(Aka. I wanted to go more into the consequences of suddenly being stuck in another, non-human body.)(Warning up front:My favorite part of Overlord is how everyone (villain and general protagonist-y individuals and groups) is indiscriminately CRUSHED under the boot of evil's sheer power. This fic reflects that.)





	Stood Up for Evil

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my free-writing project.
> 
> (I say as if this thing hasn't been sitting on my desk since last MARCH.)
> 
> So usually, I'm very structured with my plotlines and writing to make sure wires don't get crossed. However, I've been advised that free-writing, rather than making lists and CONSTANTLY EDITING will help the juices get flowing with my other fics (and original works) in the long run. This is essentially a mix of D&D and other stuff thrown into a bowl, put into a microwave, and set on sensor reheat.
> 
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> 
> **PLEASE READ THE TAGS.**
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> 
> As you read in the summary, my favorite part of Overlord is the not nice part. The beginning is very safe and normal and that's just going to highlight just how horrifying this OC becomes later on. Bad things happen. I was reluctant to put it as "Reader" in the relationship tags or use 2nd POV because it just gets THAT'S how horrifying it gets.
> 
> If you still choose to read this, thank you and I hope you enjoy.

The rice noodles tasted delicious and they really did use the cleanest oil for their fried snacks here. Making sure there was a little of the broth in his spoon, he slurped down chewy noodle and delicately fragrant soup in one go.

 

Boss hadn’t been happy that he had been taking another day off. But in his defense, it had been a _while_ since he’d last used any of his accumulated time and he’d made good use of it. Since he’d gotten off of work yesterday evening, he’d been running around the whole of Yggdrasil, visiting his favorite places and taking in the sights of anywhere he hadn’t already gone to in the past two weeks. He’d even managed to visit part of the Seven Hidden Mines, though it was the one part of the trip that left an especially bittersweet taste in his mouth. There was no way he could retake it.

 

Not now.

 

Not alone.

 

Sighing heavily, he rested his hand on the warm plastic of the table and heaved himself up. He was grateful that no one had come to sit with him while he was eating, though a man who was casually walking around the hawker center tables seemed like he was going to aim for his leftovers as soon as he left. Not that he would have to interact with anybody plopping down with him, but he was feeling the effects of having been awake for so long and he needed a certain amount of energy to even _be_ around strangers a lot of the time. So he was grateful that he was left alone with his favorite kway teow noodle soup and tempura.  

 

The perfect comfort food for an exhausted heart.

 

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his sweat jacket, he hunched his shoulder as a cool ocean breeze blew down the street. It wasn’t _cold_ by any means; Singapore just didn’t _do_ cold. But he was born and raised next to the equator and he preferred hot and humid to the coolness some evenings brought, the kind that cut right through the humidity.

 

By the time he got back to his apartment, he was admittedly a little bit dizzy. Over 36 waking hours of being plugged in had never been the best thing to do for his health, but he had been determined to finish his tour of the game’s world. And having completed that, he had thought _fuck it_ and gone to his favorite noodle place, even though it wasn’t the closest hawker stall to where he lived. He deserved it and it was going to be that draining of a day.

 

The process of setting things up and plugging himself in was second nature. He’d done it when he was half-asleep before and this wasn’t _nearly_ as extreme as those times. Going through the motions was enough to make everything in him relax back then, just as it made all his muscles unwind now.

 

Leaning back into the console chair, he logged in and let out a controlled exhale.

 

He closed his eyes before his vision could go black.

 

* * *

 

 

She opened her eyes to mist and shades of gray.

 

Inhaling deeply, she could pretend that she was smelling the grave soil and decay through slitted nostrils, that she could feel the cool bite of the misty atmosphere and dig her bare, clawed toes into the pitted dirt. She wouldn’t mind the cold if it was real here.

 

Taking the time to briefly reorient herself, she quickly found her direction and took off in an easy jog.

 

**[Message: Momonga]**

 

[Hey, I’m back online. Where are you?], she asked, throwing in a cheering emoji.

 

[I saw!], Momonga messaged back, throwing his own cheering emoji in return. [I was worried when you went offline there for a bit.]

 

[Sorry, went to get food.], she admitted. [I was celebrating completing my tour. I’m almost back to Nazarick now.]

 

[Oh thank god.] Momonga muttered. [I’m glad.]

 

She slowed briefly before picking up speed again, [Wait…Is nobody else there yet?]

 

[Not so far.], he confirmed gloomily.

 

It was…disappointing. It made her stomach sink because she had _hoped_ for a grand last hurray. To see everyone one last time, maybe reconnect, catch up. All that. If nothing else, just to have as many (all) of the Guild together _in_ Nazarick as everything…went.

 

[Well we still have a few hours.], she hummed encouragingly for lack of better things to say. As the landmarks become even more familiar, she equipped her Ring. [I know! Let’s do our own little tour of Nazarick. Just the two of us.]

 

[But…], Momonga protested weakly. [What if someone—]

 

[Then our friend lists will notify us.], she interrupted firmly. [We’ll spend the last few hours in the Round Table room to wait for them, but we still have some time until then. Meet me at the entrance. We’ll start from the top down.]

 

When she got there a few minutes later, he was there, waiting between the columns of the Tomb’s entrance. She threw another cheering emoji at him as she climbed the stairs, which he returned.

 

[Momonga.], she greeted warmly.

 

[Neith Lurazic…], he sighed in greetings, quietly happy and relieved.

 

It was…It caused something in her to unwind. You’d hardly think they had only gone 3 weeks without seeing each other. But when there really wasn’t anybody else in your virtual or real life…

 

No matter how far she ventured or for how long she was away, she could always return here. Even if everyone else was gone, Momonga would be here. At this point, with how long everyone else has been gone, the Tomb of Nazarick just wasn’t _the Tomb of Nazarick_ unless its Guild Master was present.

 

It was home, even more than his little apartment was. Just like how there were times Neith Lurazic (confident and strong and _free_ ) felt more real than Som Takigawa (always afraid, always inadequate, always lonely).

 

Among all of them, Momonga was _the_ one to go to when you needed a good, understanding listener. And for them who were so invested in their crafting, they all deeply appreciated someone who was earnestly enthusiastic about their projects and passions. She had never met anyone else who was quite so accepting or genuinely interested in her decision to play as a female character, the effort she’d put into her build, and the time and money she put into it. And all while _knowing_ she identified as a man in the real world, never commenting on the discrepancy between his female avatar and very male voice.

 

At least here, she knew she had _someone_. _Someone_ who wasn’t murked up in his past and his mistakes and _knew her_ and _about_ him without _knowing him._

 

His own younger brother had been like that as well. A quiet, cautious, strangely mature child. He couldn’t but wonder again if that child would have grown up to be like Momonga.

 

She mentally cut off and brushed away that line of thinking. Those kinds of thoughts had no place in this world.

 

Determinedly, she ignored that this place soon wouldn’t exist at all.

 

[Oh!], she exclaimed. [Come here!]

 

Taking a hand-sized floating orb with a slotted data crystal in its side out of her inventory, she pulled up what she now considered to be the most useful feature she’d ever bought. Lightly throwing it into the air, she checked to make sure the gleaning, faceted crystal was facing the right way before gesturing for Momonga to move closer.

 

[Smile.], she joked. **[Screen Capture.]**

 

She had spent much of the last two weeks snapping selfies of herself interesting places. Once the data crystal in the orb was full, she transferred the data to her PC and replaced it with a fresh one. These would have to do for souvenirs. There was nothing else she could take with her besides that and her memories. Now, she had important memorabilia of herself and her Guild Master at the entrance of their base.

 

[Prepare yourself.], she emoji-poked Momonga. [We’re going to take lots of pics. Then I have a surprise for you.]

 

[What?!], the Overlord avatar shot her several emoji expressing embarrassment and surprise. [Neith Lurazic, you really didn’t need to!]

 

[You don’t even know what it is yet!], she teased. [Just bear with me! Oh! And let’s bring some of the NPC’s with us as we go. Wouldn’t it be so cool to have one pic with everyone and their projects together?!]

 

[Of course…], he agreed but trailed off, trying and failing to be enthusiastic.

 

As with this whole situation, she steadfastly ignored both their doubts and dragged him along. He was good at ignoring and getting away from things she didn’t want to think about.

 

[Give me a moment.], she waved. **[Shift.]**

 

She didn’t feel it, but she intently took in the sight of her long, green-brown, scaled legs shifting into a long, completely scaled tail. If possible, she wanted to sear the vision of the high-end graphics transformation into her mind. As a halfblood yuan-ti, a female snakeman, she had spent most of her beginning levels slithering around before she was able to gain the appropriate polymorph abilities to gain a somewhat more human-ish shape. Now that everything was…ending, she wanted it to end like how it started.

 

He already had legs.

 

Neith Lurazic was born on her tail.

 

Needlessly stretching, she admired the breadth of her transformation. With legs, she was a good 6 feet tall. In transforming back to her original shape, she had grown larger in muscles and longer in length, and her knee-length, black hair had flexed into a hard, cobra-like hood that flared behind the length of her torso.

 

She never was really clear how her clothes shifted when she changed, but it did. She remembered joking about it with Punitto Moe who also had a similar bug sometimes, what with basically being a being made from evil plants.

 

[How do I look?], she joked, sending a smirking emoji. It was an old joke, one told to whoever saw the transformation. But while most players reacted…negatively to a giant serpent with a heavily muscled torso and arms, those that mattered knew the punchline.

 

[Like something right out of a monster movie.], Momonga expressed a laughing emoji.

 

[Why thank you!], she emoted similarly. [Now let’s go.]

 

* * *

 

 

It turned out to be a good idea. Silly and whimsical, in the end, but fun.

 

First was the Catacombs, where they took some artistic photos of Momonga among the graves as well as with Shalltear and some of the undead mobs. She even got the Overlord to take a picture with her in Kyouhukou’s room. After all, it was practically a scene taken right out a page of her favorite horror tropes. She _needed_ a reminder of it. Now if there was only some invading player suffering at the moment then the scene would be perfect…

 

[Is this really okay?], he muttered as they ordered the True Vampire NPC to follow them. [I was originally thinking it would be best if they stayed where they were made to be when everything shut down. Would the others be okay that we did this?]

 

[I’ll take responsibility if they raise a fuss about.], she reassured him as they made their way to the next floor. While they _could_ just teleport around with the Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown, she had insisted that the two of them should take the opportunity to walk around one last time. She still wasn’t regretting it. [I’m the one with the Screen Capture Orb.]

 

And it continued on like that. They would visit familiar and unfamiliar spots, wonder over the creation and reminiscing together. All the while, she had him pose, posed herself, and just took photos of the general scenery. By the time they got to the sixth floor, she could tell that Momonga had relaxed to a certain degree and was actually having fun.

 

Taking a picture of his small figure standing on a cliff edge with a backdrop of Floor 6’s starry sky, she couldn’t help but muse how Momonga was actually a perfect subject for Tomb photos. Dark and forbidding and a large, regal figure that was perfectly suited in any of Nazarick’s environments.

 

It was by far the least insidious way she’d ever used this feature; so different than how she’d used it for the guild in the past that it was actually kind of hilarious.

 

(She hoped at least _some_ of the others would make an appearance soon. Just five minutes. Just tonight. There had been _emails._ )

 

[The Jungle Nest is next.], Neith Lurazic hummed as they made their way across the Lava Floor. [Then we can go get the Belle Fiore twins on the way down.]

 

Momonga nodded passively and, with Shalltear and Cocytus trailing behind them, they set off through the thick jungle.

 

* * *

 

 

The Jungle Nest was the first of her two big projects. And while she called it a nest, it was bit more a structured village if you ignored that the residents were variations of serpent folk that lived leisurely among ruins that were more green than stone now.

 

More than anything, it was a matter of being inspired and adding just that bit more detail to the picture as a whole. The sixth floor had been worked on by many, but everyone knew it was Blue Planet’s baby. She had chosen to focus on the details of her Nests as a whole rather than any one NPC. (To this day, she had no idea how Ulbert had the energy to essentially take on the whole of the seventh floor as his personal project.) Having seen the jungle theme, she couldn’t help but remember the research she’d done into that old tabletop, roleplaying game that from almost a century ago for when she was creating her own specs. Hadn’t their lore said that yuan-ti’s as a species canonically lived in the jungle ruins?

 

As she slithered through the undergrowth and over the huge reaching roots, she was so glad that she didn’t have his real-world physical limitations. Past the hidden nests with their level 25 broodguards. Past the level 50 to 75 halfbloods and purebloods. Past the level 80 mageslayer set to watch over everything. And past the pair of holy guardians that flanked the entrance to the ruined temple, coiled at the ready with halberds held across their armored human torsos and their serpent heads reared back, ready to strike.

 

[This is nostalgic.], Momonga reminisced as they stepped out of the night air into the even darker stone room. It was a bit dark, what with the only sources of light being some “smoky” torches and a low-burning flame that cast shadows over the wicked statue carved out of the far wall. [You spent _hours_ agonizing over every little detail here.]

 

[And you’d sit here like a rock and listen to me agonizing.], she retorted, taking in the notice that she had gained the blessed effect from walking into the temple of the god she was sworn to. She huffed and sheepishly admitted, [I didn’t have an exact image of what I wanted to do here or how to set it all up. It’s why the Volcanic Nest with the ignans was a lot easier.]

 

She posed rather dramatically in front of the brazier and statue of the anathemas, a six serpent-headed yuan-ti with a pair of 3-fingered arms meant to represent the evil god Merrshaulk. As a Negative 500 cleric, Ulbert had jokingly called her the yuan-ti’s High Priestess with the amount of lore she’d put into the hissing, attacking statues and Nests’ background. Not that he had any right to speak. He’d heard her say “evil god that seeks the world’s destruction” and was sold like bluefin tuna at the fish market.

 

Now…the amount of money she’d used to buy cash items to expand Nazarick’s data to use for her Nests…

 

[Done.], she announced without a trace of shame, though she could hear Momonga sputtering over how she dramatically had decided to do this. With her arms spread out before, the brazier behind her casting her in shadows, the abomination priest pair flanking her, and the statue’s reaching snakeheads overhead, it made for a cool image if a bit embarrassing to actually make the motion. But she was Neith Lurazic. Shame was a thing _he_ knew, not her.

 

[We’re almost done with this floor.], she mused. [Then it’s the last four and then we’ll wait in the Round Table Room.]

 

As they made their way out of the Jungle Nest, Momonga suddenly spoke. And just from the tone of his voice, she could tell he had been staring his friends list for some time now.

 

[Do you…], he trailed off. [Do you think anyone will come?]

 

She was quick to reassure him, [I’m sure someone will come.]. As if it hadn’t been just them for a long, long time now. [I’m sure.]

 

 

 

_"The snake stood up for evil in the Garden."_

_\- Robert Frost_


End file.
